The Demon's Requiem
by sydneythecat
Summary: It wasn't Lisanna's death that locked her strength away. It was what happened in the wake of such a tragedy that forced the demon into slumber... / AU / Miraxus/MirajanexLaxus, no outright lemons, M for violence and gore / Update every Wednesday / ::This is not a happy story:: /
1. Chapter 1 - Fury

Chapter One ~ **Fury**

If there were ever a time for terror, that time was now.

She was weaving a tapestry of decay and desolation right before their desperate eyes. A great force kept them kneeling, nearly splitting each kneecap as it crushed itself against the concrete. Six knees were imprisoned by her fearsome gravity, three men were entranced by her mind-numbing power, and an entire town was witnessing what would happen to those who would have the audacity to threaten The Demon's family; and, oh, how very damned they would find themselves were they not to testify after the fact.

She appeared so innocent throughout the initial encounter. The beauty of her smile was... surprising, to say the least. But the dark guild members' intentions were nowhere within or anywhere near the realm of smile-inducing. They had recited the words their master had whispered maliciously to them before they set out to find her, and instead of the future their leader had promised them upon delivering such a message, a chain of events unpredictable by even the most gifted psychic had disastrously unfurled.

_"She will wither like a flower,"_ he had claimed reassuringly when they questioned why only three of them were to deliver the news; surely three was too few, and surely someone more qualified should take on the task than a handful of the guild's more average mages.

_"She will crumble in your arms. Do not doubt my foresight."_

But how could the creature before them simply crumble? How could her marble face succumb to cracking? This was no flower. There would be no petal willing to adorn such a devil... And even if one dared kiss the pale porcelain of her breast, it would not merely wither.

It would disintegrate.

Darkness had ensnared their bodies and minds, each man left to his own sins as the spell fed upon their individual grievances against humanity and magi alike. Even though she had not spoken a word since her transformation, they could feel the weight of a holy judgment, as if they were guilt ridden religious men receiving a core-cutting sermon. But there would be no deliverance from her, or accepted repentance for them. This demon would not provide passage to either Heaven or Hell - it would force sinners' pleas to fall upon God's deaf ears as they shrieked in the chasm of black between the realms.

As the sky above them seemed to split apart and pour forth a green, acidic shower, Mirajane advanced toward the trio of messengers with an easy gait. She observed the way they knelt on the ground, and, bending over in a low bow, she descended onto her knees, as well. The forlorn fellow in the middle, stricken with horror and grief, helplessly stared at the devil's lowered head. He began to whimper like a coward as her face lifted and a piercing, crystalline gaze found his own tearful sockets.

"P-please... look, lady, we-... we're only the messengers!" He inhaled sharply, sputtering along through his pathetic sobbing. "I d-do'nt konw why he took your brother! None of us d-do!"

_Was he lying?_ She wondered, observing the way his tears snaked their way down his rough cheek, leaving softly glistening trails. In a passing thought, she pondered if the blood behind his skin would follow the same paths.

"But you do know..." she began softly, "...you know if he suffers, don't you?" Her voice was small, like an unsure child's. "You know if he is safe, or if he yearns for safety... don't you?"

He could swear that she was crying. He would bet his own life that this monster was crying as she spoke. "I... I do know that, y-yes." In such a vulnerable position, he was forced to entertain the notion of pitying her for a hare's breadth.

But a scaly hand that neither desired nor needed his pity had shot forward to curl around his throat in a vice grip, and talons sharper than the famed Titania's Benizakura found slight purchase in the fragile skin there.

"Does he suffer, you insolent bastard?" Gone was the chime-like, timid voice that had floated from her lips earlier. Her hold tightened, and her fangs bared themselves. She would not rip his esophagus from him yet, but she would build a home for pain and fear within his flesh.

The dark mage began to panic, his blood rushing upwards to his head as veins below his jaw started to seal shut under her tourniquet claws' hold. "I..." He gurgled out a short cough, and a soft mist of blood escaped in the process. "He... H-he does."

Wide eyed and slack jawed, the other two men could only spectate as slowly, carefully, and sadistically... the Demon drew finger to thumb around their companion's neck and relieved skull from shoulder.

"Then you shall suffer my darkness."

And suffer, they did.


	2. Chapter 2 - Numb

Chapter Two ~ **Numb**

The stone was clean. The delicate curve of its head seemed to kiss the atmosphere of Kardia Cathedral's graveyard solemnly, regrettably; somewhat tiredly. Gray was too soft a word for its color. Earth was too warm a place for such a monument. It was just clean stone.

The siblings stood before it. Both were heavily bruised and bandaged. One wept unabashedly; the other stood silent, her face as clean as the stone that marked her sister's empty grave. Empty… There wasn't anything left to place in the ground… Lisanna hadn't cried; there weren't even any tears to bottle up and bury deep. There was just… nothing. Nothing but the memory of the words tripping off the tip of Lisanna's weakened tongue that Mirajane's ears would never catch.

Elfman and his sister were too oblivious in their heartbreak to notice the priest's approaching footsteps.

"Mister and Miss Strauss?" He asked quietly. His voice, Mira noted after being made aware of his presence because of it, was just as jarring as every other noise around her. She found no comfort in it. It was just a THWACK on a cymbal she wished would break under the pressure of the mallet that seemed to pummel it relentlessly. Lisanna's whispers had been so quiet. Everything else was just a noisy nuisance, now.

"Yes?" Her tone was short. She knew why the priest was here. The stone was clean.

His robes were stark white, save for a pitch black belt snugly tied just above his hips. Short brown hair fell flat against his forehead as the rain battered his skull. The balding area at the crown of his head was as pale as his face and hands, and Mira took a moment to observe his slender fingers. They trembled; shifting several times to shelter something white nestled between them. Whatever it was crinkled, and again, Mira's tired eardrums were assaulted with the sound.

"I've come to mark the grave."

_Labeling a body that isn't even there…_ Mira thought bitterly.

Elfman said nothing, and instead allowed a new wave of sobs to wrack his body as the reason the two of them were there struck his heart anew.

"H-her name w-was-s-" Elfman was failing to perform any other function besides succumbing to grief. The priest quickly shushed him.

"Your guild master, Makarov, sent over all the paperwork. I know all I need to know," he murmured in a sympathetic tone as he revealed what was between his hands: a piece of paper, no doubt scrawled with their Master's scratchy cursive writing. Mira thought she could see her sister's name and birth date. With a wave of his wrist, the clean stone bore a precious name, a pair of dates that marked a devastatingly small lifespan, and some words that caught the pair of siblings so off guard that they audibly gasped.

_Beloved sister… friend to animal souls…_

"The fee is taken care of. Take your time," the priest said, and then made his presence scarce.

"Th-thank you," Elfman managed to croak out before bending over completely and pressing his weeping face into the mud. He stayed like that for quite some time, his back shivering and shaking from the force of his cries.

It was just another noise that scorched Mira's senses. Just another image she knew she'd never forget. Just another place she would always associate with loss and hate.

She did not blame her brother; she never would. She didn't blame anyone. There was no one to blame, anyway. It was life, after all. Not everyone makes it through the whole journey. But here was her little brother blaming himself. Here he was, shouldering a grief she would never know. She was grieved, yes, but not in the way he was.

He had resigned himself to carrying, forever, the burden of murdering Lisanna.

But he hadn't. He hadn't murdered her. This wasn't his fault. She couldn't let him go down that path. He was all she had left… No, they were all each other had left.

"Elfman…" She began softly, her resolve strong. She was the mother, now. This was her job, damnit.

"She said so herself." Mira had never revealed the fact that she'd been eavesdropping that day.

Elfman's parakeet had disappeared. He presumed it to be dead, and had erected a humble grave in its honor. Lisanna had only sought to comfort her older brother. She was wise beyond her years… She was so young, yet so strong already. Mirajane had secretly observed, the pride in her chest burning brightly at her little sister's words. She was not a naïve soul. She was prepared for how the world worked, and yet she was still so soft. _She is the balance of the two of us; Elfman, you and I,_ Mira thought then. _She will achieve everything we never could. She will survive it all._

"All living things eventually die." The image of Lisanna's blank stare burst into her mind's eye. "It's… unavoidable." The way her body was so still. The way her head shook violently as its muscles strained to perform as simple of a movement as turning to see Mirajane's tear-stained face. "But as long as you remember…" Her final words, unfinished. Her final song, unsung. The sudden absence filling Mira's arms in place of Lisanna's broken body. "…it will live on in your heart, forever."

And she was gone. She was going to survive it all.

And she was gone.

* * *

Earlier that evening...

Makarov sat upon the edge of the second story railing in silence. Much like Mira's eardrums, his own were so tired and so aggravated… So tired of hearing anything other than his child's happy laughter; so aggravated that he would never hear her smile erupting into song ever again. Purehito had left him with the charge of caring for Fairy Tail. His guild. His family. Had his former master been mistaken in his actions? Where had Makarov gone wrong? Before they left, he knew in the back of his mind, they needed a fourth. There should have been a fourth member; Natsu, maybe, or even Erza. He had faith in his children, but he was also a man whom lacked naivety regarding the monster they were up against. Why, then, did he refrain from suggesting a fourth? Perhaps his blind faith had outshone the doubt he should have heeded.

His family had suffered a grave loss. One of their own, one from what seemed like the very beginning of the tightly-knit unit which now occupied this guild hall, one that did not deserve the end she was given… was now gone. _"There is no body,"_ he recalled Mirajane uttering to him. She spat the sentence from her lips as if it were poison. There was a bitterness that hung from her mouth's down-turned corners that Makarov had never seen on Mira's face, before. Was she angry with Elfman? Surely the eldest Strauss could see that if Elfman had any choice whatsoever in the matter, things would have gone drastically differently. Mira was not one to place blame on those who did not rightfully deserve it. As she walked away, Makarov realized she did not elaborate on why there was no body. His mind wandered to a dark place where Elfman's self control was lying in tatters around him as he ripped his younger sister limb from limb, bone from bone, blood vessel from vessel… How extensive was the damage for there to have been nothing, absolutely _nothing_ left?The star of his wonderings stepped in front of him, then, quiet tears spilling across his bruised cheeks. As if he knew where Master's mind was dwelling, he spoke, barely above a whisper:

_"She just disappeared."_

His voice box seemed as tired as Makarov's eardrums; from roaring, from screaming, from weeping… From all of the horror he had seen; the horror he had unknowingly caused. His words were laden with regret and sorrow – yet, sorrow seemed too weak a word for what Master heard within them. He had no name for it.

It was a cousin of despair. A daughter to terror. A brother to grief. It was too terrible a thing to even be named… For those who experience it are too frightened of it to give it any recognition after it passes from them, if it ever passes, at all.

Makarov knew that he would never forget the sound of Elfman's voice as he murmured such telling words.

"Oh, my children…" he softly cried to the walls around him, to guild members made deaf by the emptiness of death, huddling together in desperation on the ground below him.

No one would sleep tonight. The two remaining Strauss siblings would not rest for days, he knew. They would go to Kardia Cathedral that evening, and attempt to bury the nightmare they had witnessed, and fail. Everyone was lost inside a world of darkness and loss and no one would leave it so soon. It was still too new; too fresh of a wound that misery had left… And sweet misery, how she loves her company. Not a soul would leave her arms tonight.

* * *

A/N: I'm having a bit of trouble with writer's block at the moment, forgive me for such a short chapter, and for getting it out there so late. To those who have reviewed and followed, thank you so much! I, too, love me some dark-side Mirajane. This story will focus on that, hot and heavy. I'm excited to see where it will go and just how troubled our dear Mira becomes... Anyway, as always, please review and let me know your thoughts. This chapter was a bit of a filler, just a little transition so as to introduce everyone to the situation and the attitude that's present with nearly all the characters involved at this point in the story. For the Miraxus lovers out there, patience. 'Tis coming. ;) next chapter should be up by next Wednesday, the 28th! Bye for now~ xx


End file.
